TRIBUTE TO THE HONORABLE LYNN WOOLSEY, MEMBER OF CONGRESS
Unfortunately, her messages have not always been heard. But there are those of us, those of us who work with her in the Progressive Caucus, those of us who work with her in the Out of Iraq Caucus, who have tried to not only give support but to do the same kinds of things that she has been doing in order to end this war.
The American people are tired of this war, and I find it disingenuous for some of the pundits to say that somehow this is off the radar screen, that this is not an issue that the American public cares about anymore, that somehow it is the economy. Of course it is the economy, but you cannot separate what is going on within our economy from the war. We must look at this war for what it is.
First of all, it is a war that we certainly should not be in. We were misled. There were never any weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein is dead. Four thousand of our American soldiers have been killed in this war. Countless Iraqis, Iraqi civilians, and others who have made up the coalition forces from other countries are also dead. And so here we are, and the pundits are talking about it is not about the war, it's not on the radar screen of the American public, that the economy is, when, in fact, our economy is in recession because of this mismanaged war.
We have a President of the United States who came in as a fiscal conservative supposedly belonging to the party of the fiscal conservatives who have been spending, spending, spending on this war in Iraq, over $500 billion on this war in Iraq, at the same time giving tax cuts to the richest 1 percent of the corporations of America and denying the dollars that we need to invest in our own domestic problems that need to be addressed.
We had a bridge fall down in Minneapolis, and people wondered why did that happen. And when we took a close look at the reviews, the assessments that had been done about the state of affairs of our bridges and our infrastructure, we learned that many of our bridges in America are in the same position that that bridge was in, and we know that they have been assessed to be dangerous, that they need repair.
Why don't we have the money to invest in our infrastructure? Why is it we cannot create the jobs by investing in our infrastructure? Why can't we repair the bridges and the roads and the highways and build credible transportation systems? It is because this administration has decided that we are going to spend a disproportionate amount of the taxpayers' dollars on this war in Iraq, and we don't know when we are going to get out of this war in Iraq. And this administration would have us believe, because they have sent more soldiers and spent more money in the so-called surge, that somehow we are winning the war. What are we winning? What does winning look like? I don't recognize it.
I know this: I know that these 4,000 soldiers that have been killed in Iraq are not with their families, that their families, many, are in disarray; many of them very patriotic, who went to war because the President said that they were needed; and many of them who are no longer with us, their families are suffering. And we have others who have been injured who have come home, and they have not gotten the best medical treatment that they should have received, even though they were promised that, if they serve, they would be taken care of.
So here we are. We have destabilized the Middle East and we have occupied Iraq. We have Iran that is threatening us, Syria, Lebanon destabilized, and Pakistan is a joke.
I will simply conclude by thanking Lynn Woolsey for all that she has done to try to convince this Congress we should bring our soldiers home.
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